Comments on: Winged Weirdies in Japanhttp://cryptomundo.com/cryptotourism/winged-weirdies-japan/
for Bigfoot, Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents and MoreTue, 31 Mar 2015 01:31:16 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1By: mystery_manhttp://cryptomundo.com/cryptotourism/winged-weirdies-japan/comment-page-1/#comment-82724
Sun, 07 Oct 2012 07:07:23 +0000http://cryptomundo.com/?p=59860#comment-82724Corrick- I presume you mean of the cryptids I’ve described here? If it is out of all of the one’s I’ve written about here at Cryptomundo, I do not think I have enough space to cover that in one comment!

Of these, the one I ascribe the least amount of credibility to is the humanoid report. This is an old report, and what’s more, it changes slightly in some accounts. It is hard to say what was in the original account, what is fabrication, and indeed if the whole account is fabricated.

On top of that, I have always been highly skeptical of winged humanoid reports for more or less the same reasons that I am skeptical of very human looking mermaids. There is just simply no reason why something that has evolutionarily diverged into such a different niche from us should retain very human looking traits.

Aquatic habitats and flight would both require specific adaptations that would no doubt cause a divergence in appearance, even if we both came from a single identical ancestor. Just look at the creatures that are only slightly divergent and you will see a world of difference in appearance. For instance, bonobos and humans share most of our genetic material, yet we look quite different in spite of the fact tat we are both terrestrial organisms.

Now take that and make one of us aquatic or avian in nature, and again you are bound to see major shifts in appearance. Besides just wings or fins, there would be a whole set of interconnected adaptations leading toward specialization in a completely new environment. There are a whole slew of things that make us poorly suited to flight or an aquatic habitat besides only a lack of wings or a tail.

There is just no way to think of the evolution involved in the development of a hominid into an aquatic creature or one designed from flight and expect it to look like basically a human with a tail or wings attached. It doesn’t make biological sense. In that sense, classical mermaids or human forms with wings attached to the back don’t really add up.

As for the giant crows, I tend to think that there may be indeed very large individuals of crow. After all, we can see size variation to an extreme degree within one species. That’s how you get a midget and Minute Boll even though we are all human. So I think perhaps there are very large crows and then the surprise of that leads to exaggeration of size.

I do think the sea eagle hypothesis is interesting, but there is not much evidence to lead me to think of it as particularly strong. It’s really just grasping at possibilities.

The one here that I think may be out of place vagrant individuals or even remnant populations is the case of the giant bats. The Ryukyu flying fox has an overlap in habitat with larger bat species, and there is nothing about the distances involved that seems to make the notion totally far fetched. If one were to actually capture a larger species of flying fox in Okinawa, it would not totally blow me away.

I think accounts of bats with wingspans of 8 feet and such are likely slightly exaggerated. It happens to the best of us. Size estimation can be notoriously inaccurate, especially with a flying, moving subject against a backdrop such as the sky which may lack size references.

I think a large flying fox such as some of the Southeast Asian species I mentioned are large enough to be easily mistaken as something bigger under the right conditions.

So basically, I put the least stock in the flying humanoid report, a shrug for the giant crows, and serious consideration for vagrant species in the giant bats.

Hopefully this was informative, and thanks for the praise on my work. I really do appreciate it very much.

]]>By: corrickhttp://cryptomundo.com/cryptotourism/winged-weirdies-japan/comment-page-1/#comment-82722
Sun, 07 Oct 2012 03:15:05 +0000http://cryptomundo.com/?p=59860#comment-82722Thanks for this as well as all your previous posts concerning Japanese mystery animal sightings. They are fascinating to read and always well-written and researched. Obviously one thing you can say about folklore or testimonial stories is that they are rarely boring.

My question(s). Given your research, are there any particular animals you’ve described that you actually think might exist undiscovered? Additionally are there any you think can be adequately explained by vagrants and if so which?